The North Pool @ Barrington Stage Company, 8/2/12

by Michael Eck
In over 20 years of reviewing theater, Rajiv Joseph’s “The North Pool” is the first play that has made me nearly sick to my stomach.
This is praise, not criticism.
Joseph’s work is as unflinching and brutal as theater can be, and it completes this task with words alone.
Director Giovanna Sardelli’s production at Barrington Stage Company’s St. Germain Stage is a gut punch, pure and simple. It is the kind of work of art that, in its telling, makes you disgusted to be human, and in its creative glory, makes you glad to be alive.
Joseph’s work is set in the cinder block office of high school vice principal.
It’s immediately obvious that Dr. Danielson is a petty man, a little tyrant that would give classically buffoonish Hollywood’s administrators nightmares.
He has called in senior student Khadim Ossman, oddly in the last few minutes of the last school day before spring break. Something feels wrong immediately.
Khadim has transferred to the enormous Sheffield High midway through the semester, from a prestigious, expensive private school. Khadim is Syrian, and Danielson is obviously a little closed-minded about diversity.
But nothing is obvious in “The North Pool.”
To call it a chess game would be easy. By play’s end it is closer kin to gladiatorial combat.
Danielson, for one, is smarter than he lets on. Like a fox. But Khadim is his equal, and in Joseph’s script one never tires of the unexpected role reversals. These very turnabouts — loaded to the bursting point with tension — are what make “The North Pool” twist like a carnival ride gone horribly wrong.
On that ride, though, the stakes are merely an upset stomach (which “The North Pool” may well give you). In this play, the stakes are much higher. Matters of race, economy, sex, ethics and education are batted back and forth. More than once there is even a hint of murder. To reveal much more would be unfair to Joseph’s remarkable work.
Suffice to say “The North Pool” is a pitch black, stunningly contemporary look not just as who we are, but who we are becoming.
BSC newcomers Remi Sandri and Babak Tafti play Danielson and Khadim.
Both are brave, willing to travel deeply into distinctly unlikable characters. Each time the audience finds one thing to respect in one character, Joseph negates that feeling with the next revelation.
Sandri and Tafti don’t stint on being despicable.
And Sardelli never releases the tension for even a moment.
At Thursday’s matinee there were actual gasps from the audience, and perhaps the first spontaneous ovation that’s been merited in the Berkshires this season.
To further mix muddy metaphors, suggesting you see “The North Pool” is something like suggesting you watch a car accident.
It is hideous, but you will not be able to turn away.
It is brilliant just the same. It is why theater exists.